Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies
an open letter to WTOP News
by Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher
August 24, 2023
The author submitted the following suggestions to WTOP News today in the hopes of convincing the news outlet to stop promoting the hateful Drug War narrative.
1) regarding coverage of DC killings. In 2014, Ann Heather Thompson wrote the following in the Atlantic: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." Yet most media outlets in the country write as if the rising inner-city gun violence is inexplicable. I request that WTOP start connecting the dots between prohibition and gun violence, for it was prohibition that incentivized the disastrous arming of the hood in the first place, leading to the creation of no-go shooting zones that, to America's shame, have remained in force for almost half a century now.
2) Regarding your coverage of drugs like fentanyl and MDMA and laughing gas: Please remember ALL the stakeholders in the drug debate. When we demonize drugs rather than understand them, we throw pain patients and the depressed under the bus, by forcing them to go without godsends -- or without adequate doses of godsends -- because doctors are afraid to prescribe. There's a call now for the outlawing of laughing gas. That's throwing millions of the depressed under the bus. I hope that WTOP will remind its readers, by way of context, that the philosophy of William James was inspired by his use of laughing gas and that he himself said that we must study altered states in order to understand ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." But disregard them we must if prohibitionists have their way.
3) Please be sceptical of anything that the DEA reports. They have a vested interest in seeing that there is always a drug problem. Their multi-billion-dollar budget depends upon it. I suggest that you have your reporters read "Synthetic Panics" before they report government drug information as gospel truth. It tells how the DEA leverages local drug misuse into a series of national crises with the help of agitprop documentaries on shows like 48 Hours. "The New Face of Fentanyl, the New Face of Ice, the New Face of Crack, The New Face of PCP," etc. NIDA is not a good source either, for they fund studies only on abuse and misuse - never on positive use, meaning they are truly a propaganda arm of the US government.
If these suggestions seem controversial, please consider that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because of the Drug War, whose draconian laws sent millions of minorities to jail, thereby depriving them of the right and/or the ability to vote. In fact, that's clearly the REAL reason for the war on drugs: like GOP redistricting, it's a way to let the far right steal elections. 37,000 people are killed by cars every year, but we do not need to outlaw cars: we need to teach safe driving. Just so with the modern scapegoat called drugs. We have created all the problems by ensuring dangerous uncertain drug supplies for users, meanwhile absolutely refusing to teach them safe use - for the insane reason that this might encourage use. Use is not bad in itself. To say so is Christian Science.
In short, please stop reckoning without the Drug War. It has huge negative ramifications on a free society. Please start pushing back with smart coverage that connects the dots between today's problems and our disastrous drug policy. The kinds of drugs we demonize today have inspired entire religions. As Trump's propaganda-aided election has shown, America can have democracy or it can have a Drug War, but it cannot have both.
Even when laudanum was legal in the UK, pharmacists were serving as moral adjudicators, deciding for whom they should fill such prescriptions. That's not a pharmacist's role. We need an ABC-like set-up in which the cashier does not pry into my motives for buying a substance.
Folks who believe in the drug war should consider that it is a multi-billion-dollar campaign to enforce the attitude of the Pizarro's of the world when it comes to non-western medicines. It is the apotheosis of the colonialism that most people claim to hate.
This hysterical reaction to rare negative events actually creates more rare negative events. This is why the DEA publicizes "drug problems," because by making them well known, they make the problems more prevalent and can thereby justify their huge budget.
The drug war is a big scare campaign to teach us to distrust mother nature and to rely on pharmaceuticals instead.
Properly speaking, MDMA has killed no one at all. Prohibitionists were delighted when Leah Betts died because they were sure it was BECAUSE of MDMA/Ecstasy. Whereas it was because of the fact that prohibitionists refuse to teach safe use.
When folks die in horse-related accidents, we need to be asking: who sold the victim the horse? We've got to crack down on folks who peddle this junk -- and ban books like Black Beauty that glamorize horse use.
I think we should start taking names. All politicians and government officials who work to keep godsends like psilocybin from the public should be held to account for crimes against humanity when the drug war finally ends.
Even if the FDA approved MDMA today, it would only be available for folks specifically pronounced to have PTSD by materialist doctors, as if all other emotional issues are different problems and have to be studied separately. That's just ideological foot-dragging.
Some fat cat should treat the entire Supreme Court to a vacation at San Jose del Pacifico in Mexico, where they can partake of the magic mushroom in a ceremony led by a Zapotec guide.
"Abuse" is a funny term because it implies that there's a right way to use "drugs," which is something that the drug warriors deny. To the contrary, they make the anti-scientific claim that "drugs" are not good for anybody for any reason at any dose.
Listen to the Drug War Philosopher as he tells you how you can support his work to end the hateful drug war -- and, ideally, put the DEA on trial for willfully lying about godsend medicines! (How? By advertising on this page right c'here!)
Buy the Drug War Comic Book by the Drug War Philosopher Brian Quass, featuring 150 hilarious op-ed pics about America's disgraceful war on Americans
You have been reading an article entitled, Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News, published on August 24, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)
You have been reading an article entitled, Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News, published on August 24, 2023 on AbolishTheDEA.com. For more information about America's disgraceful drug war, which is anti-patient, anti-minority, anti-scientific, anti-mother nature, imperialistic, the establishment of the Christian Science religion, a violation of the natural law upon which America was founded, and a childish and counterproductive way of looking at the world, one which causes all of the problems that it purports to solve, and then some, visit the drug war philosopher, at abolishTheDEA.com. (philosopher's bio; go to top of this page)